Web 2.0 Is Google

Google has been buying up so-called "dark fiber," fiber optic lines in place but unused that have the capacity to carry enormous amounts of information. There's been a great deal of speculation that Google intended to become a sort of newfangled Ma Bell telco. The truth just might be more interesting than that. Does Google intend to buy the internet? I mean: become the internet?

The probable answer lies in one of Google's underground parking
garages in Mountain View. There, in a secret area off-limits even to
regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any
shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center.
Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out
how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and
power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000
Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be
dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant
one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically
turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.

While Google could put these containers anywhere, it makes the most
sense to place them at Internet peering points, of which there are
about 300 worldwide.

Two years ago Google had one data center. Today they are reported to
have 64. Two years from now, they will have 300-plus. The advantage to
having so many data centers goes beyond simple redundancy and fault
tolerance. They get Google closer to users, reducing latency. They
offer inter-datacenter communication and load-balancing using that
no-longer-dark fiber Google owns. But most especially, they offer
super-high bandwidth connections at all peering ISPs at little or no
incremental cost to Google.

I've heard worse ideas. Google offers a simple, reliable, immensely useful thing for free to everyone now. They understand the rights and responsibilities of what amounts to a public utility. All great business stories are based on a kind of audacity. You need to think big when others are thinking small. Google always thinks big.